


Sickly Sweet

by orphan_account



Category: Hänsel und Gretel | Hansel and Gretel (Fairy Tale), Sherlock (TV)
Genre: 221B Ficlet, Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Cannibalism, Fairy Tale Retellings, Gen, Kidlock, Magical Realism, Minor Character Death, Murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-28
Updated: 2013-06-28
Packaged: 2017-12-16 11:59:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/861767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Holmes brothers are lost in the woods.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sickly Sweet

**Author's Note:**

  * For [orithea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/orithea/gifts).



> A very happy birthday to Ori, who asked for a fic with "morbid" and "magical realism". Ori, I hope this works. :)
> 
> There's another fandom lurking in here, but not enough that I felt justified in tagging it. Please do mind the tags, though.
> 
> A big thank you to the folks at Let's Write Sherlock for offering a fairy tale prompt. Folks who are into Sherlock fairy tales, that's most of what I do: here's ["The Snow Queen"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/752877) and ["Mr. Fox"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/774511) and [some fawnlock that shares themes with "Beauty and the Beast"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/699156) and [an original Sherlockian fairy tale.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/693535)
> 
> I will probably submit Moar Fic to this challenge. :p Thank you so much for running it.

The badger has been dead for weeks. 

“I want to take its skull home, Mycroft,” Sherlock chirps, hopping around the corpse. Bones glow against bark.

“Don’t touch,” Mycroft orders. “Think.”

Sherlock circles. “There are branches between its ribs. Somebody broke its shoulders”--Mycroft glares--“ _scapulae_ so its front legs would extend. It looks like a hanging cross.”

“Very good, Sherlock.” 

Hushed, hopeful: “Was it pirates?”

“Don’t be stupid.” Then, gentler: “Not this time, anyway.” The sun’s setting; beneath his winter clothes, Mycroft shivers. “That’s enough for today. Let’s tell Mummy we’re ready.” 

“Where is she?”

Mycroft looks. Listens. “Mummy?”

Silent pines.

“She left us,” Sherlock frets, on the verge of tears.

_It hurts me so to see you boys, now your father’s left. You’re his very image, Mycroft._

Doesn’t sleep, forgets to eat, talks through them: Mummy has struggled for a long time. Worse since Father left, yes, but she wasn’t--has never been--

“Hush,” Mycroft says. “She would never. We’ve lost her, that’s all, and we can follow your biscuit crumbs home. You left us a trail, you slug.”

“I’m not a slug! You’re the fat one.”

Mycroft sighs. “Come along, Sherlock.”

“And lazy.” 

They find their cottage before nightfall: chimney smoke and golden windows.

“Darlings,” Mummy says, her smile curled like leather scrap. “You’ve come back.”

*

The next day, flurries sting Mycroft’s cheeks as he, Sherlock, and Mummy forage for persimmon. Sherlock tries to cling to Mummy’s cloak, but she wanders out of sight.

“I’m not hungry,” Sherlock complains. “Why are you and Mummy always worried about food?”

Mycroft should have got up earlier: magpies have been at the bushes.“Because we remember what it’s like to starve. You were born after the famine.”

“It wouldn’t’ve bothered me. I don’t _like_ food.”

Sherlock hasn’t put a single fruit in his basket; Mycroft abandons hope of filling his own. “You have it enough to be bored with it. Let’s find Mummy and go home.”

To five-year-old Sherlock’s dismay and twelve-year-old Mycroft’s weariness, they don’t find Mummy.

Sherlock fidgets and produces the badger skull from under his coat. “I took it yesterday. This morning, I pulled its teeth out so we could follow them back. In case.”

Mycroft is solemn: “You, sirrah, are the cleverest rogue e’er to sail the seas.”

Sherlock grins.

On the walk to their cottage, Mycroft eats his basket empty. Sees blood at the base of their apple tree. Follows the dark trail up: feet bare, hem torn, hair wild, face--

“Sherlock, close your eyes.” 

“But--”

_“Now.”_

Sherlock pouts. Obeys. 

Mycroft, kneeling, throws up persimmons beneath his mother’s body.

*

The soil’s too frozen for graves. 

“We’re going to Mrs. Hudson’s,” Mycroft announces, filling two rucksacks: sweaters, an iron pan, a box of matches. 

“Because Mummy’s dead?”

Their copper kettle. Dried venison. A compass on a chain.

“Yes.” Mycroft rolls a quilt and lashes it to his bag. “We should be there by nightfall if we hurry.”

That day, Sherlock complains of cold. Mycroft, back aching, insists that they are not lost.

The next day, Sherlock complains of hunger. The compass spins, confounded.

The day after, Sherlock revolts. Mycroft calls him a mutinous little cretin. A surprise: Sherlock laughs.

After a week of eating boiled pine needles and sucking ice, they see the stag: great and dark, feathered and supple, antlers sheathed in flame. 

“Follow me,” says the stag, its voice a river underground.

Compelled, they do.

At first glance, the cottage it leads them to seems all bodies and bones, layered limbs, glistening and crimson in the moonlight. When they’re close up, Sherlock’s eyes fly wide: “It’s sweets!” He bites into a marzipan hand. 

Mycroft devours a gumdrop heart. He’s halfway through a spun-sugar sternum when the stag shimmers, and where it stood stands a pale man, his winter clothes tailored and fine.

“Boys,” he says, “you look so cold. Come in, and let me warm you up some broth.” 

*

Mycroft has a colossal stomachache.

“You’re awake,” says the man who was the stag. His accent is from across the sea.

The inside of the cottage: dark colours, horizontal lines. Antlers in the walls. 

A vast, domed, clay oven.

“Why,” Mycroft says, forcibly calm, “is Sherlock in that cage?”

Sherlock sleeps, his tearstained face visible through the slats. 

“We have to fatten him up before we cook him, don’t we?” 

A cramp in Mycroft’s gut. “Those weren’t sweets.”

“You saw”--One side of the man’s mouth twitches--“what I wanted you to see.”

“You killed the badger.” Then, whispered: “Mummy.”

The man pats Mycroft’s shoulder, paternal. “You are very clever, and you are not a show-off. Not like your brother. Now put on your coat. You’re going to help me gather mushrooms.”

That night, while the man sleeps, Mycroft sits by the cage with an oil lamp. “I’ll get you out, Sherlock. We’ll go to Mrs. Hudson’s, and she’ll give us tea with honey.”

Sherlock sniffles. “How will we find her?”

 _No idea._ “Don’t worry about that.” Hands Sherlock a stick: “Listen, little pirate. We’re going to escape, but we need to work together. Like a good pirate crew, right? Here’s what we’ll do...” 

Though he pretended to ignorance when the man asked, Mycroft knows which mushrooms cause blindness.

*

It’s a recipe card held close, at first. A glass of water knocked with the back of a hand. An onion diced with slivers of skin still on.

A stick, mistaken for a forearm.

The man pretends that he is not losing his sight. Mycroft pretends not to notice the pretending. Sherlock pretends to be at sea.

Three weeks tense and the man won’t wait. Weight or no, Sherlock’s for the oven.

“Start the fires,” the man orders.

Mycroft feigns embarrassment, oil lamp in hand. “Mummy never made us cook. I don’t know how.”

A mask scans for lies. Recalibrates. Sighs. “Stupid boy.” The man vanishes into the great clay dome and lights a match.

Mycroft has never felt so calm as he does when he throws the lamp into the oven.

“I’ll free you once he’s stopped burning,” Mycroft tells Sherlock over one shoulder. “The key is in his pocket.”

The clasp springs free from the lock. Sherlock springs free from the cage. He and Mycroft shoulder their rucksacks and run, mittened hand in mittened hand. 

In the forest, the compass points true. Boots crunch snow. Stars hover close. By the time the sun seeps over the pines, they’ve found the very place.

“Mrs. Hudson,” Mycroft says at the threshold, “I wonder if you might help me and my brother.”

*

Mrs. Hudson lets both boys cling to her housecoat. At breakfast, Mycroft rests a cloth napkin in his lap; Sherlock squeezes under Mycroft’s chair (“I want to eat below decks!”) until Mrs. Hudson coaxes him out.

“I’m proud of you, my loves,” Mrs. Hudson says, setting a spoon in the honey pot.

Mycroft sucks on a slice of dried apple. His stomach turns. He puts it down.

“The stag man burnt all up. He put me in a cage, so I liked it when he screamed,” Sherlock says through a mouthful of oatmeal.

“Sherlock! You mustn’t talk like that, especially not with your mouth full. Heathen child.” She shakes her head. “Honey for your tea, Mycroft?”

Revolting. Mycroft shakes his head and stares into his cup. 

_That house: what did we eat?_

“You know,” says Mrs. Hudson, “it’s all right if you don’t feel well. It’s horrible, what’s happened to you.”

The bloody branches, the body: he’s the only one alive who saw. 

Arms squeeze his middle. A nose digs hard into his ribs. He sighs; Sherlock’s hugs and Sherlock’s attacks are so alike. “You’re getting oatmeal on my jumper,” Mycroft complains.

“It’s ugly.”

“Sherlock!” Mrs. Hudson protests.

“You’re a terrible brother.”

“Mycroft! Oh, you two.”

“So? I’m a superior pirate,” Sherlock says.

Mycroft ruffles Sherlock’s curls. “The best.”


End file.
